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Steam's Big Picture mode is fantastic and helps a lot when playing/choosing Steam games using my 360 controller. However, when I want to play PC games on my TV, I need first disable my PC monitors and enable my HDMI/TV connection, and then I need to change audio output. After that, I often need a keyboard/mouse nearby because some games don't enable the 360 controller by default, or they start in window-mode so I need to maximize them, etc. Does anybody have any tips or tricks for making this easier? It seems like using an iPad as a mouse/keyboard also helps, but I'm hoping better (more automated) options exist?
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 12:25 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 16:20 |
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Curious about this as well, as I would love to start PC gaming on my TV.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 21:16 |
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I don't have a fully automated solution to all your problems, but Win+P is an easy way to switch displays. It should work for your scenario. I saw a program for audio switching via shortcut here: http://www.40tech.com/2010/08/31/ho...-and-a-headset/ Based on the link above, there has to be something more efficient. Now if you were crazy like me, you could get an IR receiver and a media center remote for your pc, set a button to run these shortcuts, and control this from your couch. There'd likely be a way to set a button to open up steam (and you can set steam to open in big picture mode, I'm pretty sure). But this is if you're a hobbyist. If there's not something out there already to automate the process, there should be some day soon.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 21:52 |
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Will you ONLY be playing PC games on your couch? If so, what about just having your gaming rig attached to your TV and have another, less powerful computer for whatever it is people do with computers that isn't video games? (watching porn, I guess, but there is an argument that would be better on the TV as well)
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 22:08 |
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I imagine an HDMI splitter would do the trick if you don't want to switch every time, assuming your TV is the same resolution as your monitor. As for the controls, that's really up the the developers and there's only so much Steam can do. Always good to have a keyboard/mouse handy anyway.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 22:10 |
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They are kind of lovely but have you considered a media center keyboard like this:  , or using a wireless mouse with the windows on-screen keyboard? You can find that in C:\Windows\system32\osk.exe. This wouldn't really help with gaming itself too much, but for navigating around before you get in the game it would help.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 22:19 |
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Unified Remote for android works fairly well too, if you want to navigate your pc from your couch. It doubles as a mousepad/keyboard (via touchscreen, obviously), and has program-specific remotes if you're playing music in the background or something. I'm not sure if it's out for iOS, but I use it for my couch-gaming.
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 22:22 |
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crashnburn254 posted:They are kind of lovely but have you considered a media center keyboard like this: Also, OP, are you using Big Picture on Steam? If not, I strongly reccomend it. Still has bugs, but it is pretty impressive. And cool looking. http://store.steampowered.com/bigpicture/
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| # ? Nov 30, 2012 22:30 |
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This is a topic close to my heart, I even came close to writing a thread on it since I feel I have a working system setup at the moment. I use an audio output toggle thingie to change the sound output from my headphones -> the AV-receiver I have my pc hooked up. http://www.raymond.cc/blog/easily-c...s-vista-and-xp/ This is a list of some audio output toggles. I've been using #6 on my setup and it works great. Then the monitor. I use a dual monitor setup with my monitor being the primary, and then the Av-receiver (and TV) being the secondary, and my dekstop extended between these two. I used to use http://mikinho.com/w7/toggle-display/ to toggle between these two. But some time ago I noticed that Steam BP-mode has a neat little config option. Under Big Pictures Display settings you can choose the Target Monitor! This forces Steam to launch BP on (in my case) the TV, automatically making it the primary, but leaving my monitor enabled. I hope this helps.
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| # ? Dec 1, 2012 08:51 |
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Somewhat similar, but is there a way to increase the size of the font used by the UI?
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| # ? Dec 29, 2012 23:18 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 16:20 |
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Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I found this thread while I was trying to fix this very same problem. My set up is a Windows 7 PC with an Nvidia 460GTX card. It has 2 DVI ports that I run 2 monitors on my desktop with, and one HDMI port that is connected to my HDTV. This video card will only let you run 2 of the 3 ports at one time. Also, the HDMI audio device does not appear in the Windows Sound Manager until the HDMI port is enabled and active. I wanted a solution that would toggle off my desktop monitors and toggle on my TV, and also to set the default sound device on my computer to be the HDMI audio. I also wanted to switch everything back to the way it was when I was finished with Steam Big picture mode. I was able to accomplish this using couple of programs and some batch files. The first program you will need is Ultramon. This program is not free, unfortunately. It's actually quite pricey at $40. I later found out that Display Fusion (which is only $25) might have the features you need to do this, but I already have a license for Ultramon so I have not tried it and this guide will not cover it. So if you want to try displayfusion, you are on your own. The second program you need is SetSound Device. It is free. Install Ultramon, and once it is running, right click it's icon in the system tray and select Display Profiles -> New Display Profile. Go through the wizard and create a profile for the way you want to run your PC when it is connected to your desktop monitors and click next. On the second page, give it a name like desktop and check the box that says "desktop" under "Add additional links to this display profile to:" Click finish Right click Ultramon's icon again in the system tray and select Display Profiles -> New Display Profile. Go through the wizard and create a profile for the way you want to run your PC when it is connected to your TV and click next. On the second page, give it a name like TV and check the box that says "desktop" under "Add additional links to this display profile to:" Click finish Create folder to hold all of the files for this. Mine is on my desktop and the batch file I will show you later reflects this. If you move this folder after you are finished with this guide, you will need to edit some files and possibly recreate some short cuts. Copy the 2 short cuts that Ultramon created on your desktop in to the folder you created. Extract SetSound Device into the folder. This part is a little tricky and might be different depending on your system. Set your computer to use your monitors and not your TV. Run SSD.EXE. It will pop up a window that has a drop down list with all of your sound devices. On my computer it list the analog port that connects to my headphones and the digital output that goes to my computer speakers. That makes my digital connection the 2nd device. Close SSD.EXE Set your computer to you your TV and not your monitors. Run SSD.EXE again. On my computer, it now list HDMI audio as the 1st device, analog as the second, and digital as my third. Remember that your system's audio devices may be in a completely different order. In the folder, create a file named launch.bat edit the file with notepad or whatever you want to use. This is what mine looks like: code:Next the batch file changes dir to the dir that holds the shortcuts and files we have been working with. TV.lnk is the shortcut if the Ultramon profile I created that switches off my monitors and switches on the HDMI port call :Sleep 1 starts the ping subroutine at the bottom of the batch file and makes the batch wait for about 1 second. This should give your system enough time to switch, but if it needs more, change 1 to a higher number. ssd.exe 1 switches the default audio device to device number 1. In my case, this was my HDMI audio. If your HDMI audio device was not the first audio device or if you needed to use a different device, you need to use a different number here. Next the script changes to the steam dir and launches steam in Big Picture Mode. The script will wait here until you exit Steam completely. This means if you are in Big Picture Mode and you next to desktop, but do not exit Steam, the script will not continue and you monitors will not switch back. To reiterate one more time, when you are finished playing games on your TV and want to go back to your PC monitors, select "Exit Steam", not "Return to Desktop" The batch then changes dir back to your shortcuts and runs desktop.lnk which is the ultramon profile that disables the HDMI port and enables the DVI ports for my monitors. ssd.exe 2 switches my audio device back to my PC speakers. Finally, the batch changes to my steam dir and relaunches Steam in regular mode. So far, the only bug I have come across is that if Steam updates itself the batch file is trying to start Big Picture mode, steam.exe will close when it is updated and the batch with continue on and switch back to your PC monitors. If this happens, you can just run the script a second time after Steam has finished it's update and it should work the second time. A programmer buddy of mine is working on a single program to do most of this, but I am not sure when or if he will finish. In the meanwhile, this setup is working for me and I hope it can help someone else here.
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| # ? Mar 28, 2013 12:52 |
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